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1-1-2004 Reuben Gold Thwaites and the Historical Resurrection of Lewis and Clark Matt lesB sing Marquette University, [email protected]

Published version. Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 88, No. 2 (2004-2005): 42-49. Publisher Link. © 2004 Wisconsin Historical Society. Used by permission of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Any document may be printed or downloaded to a computer or portable device at no cost for nonprofit ducae tional use by teachers, students and researchers. Nothing may be reproduced in any format for commercial purposes without prior permission. Libraryof Congress 'A mapof Lezwisand Clarks track,across the waesternz portion of NorthAmerica from the Mississippi to thePacific Ocean: by order of theexecutive of the UnitedStates in 1804, S &"6 is theofficial title of thisgovernment map. It was copiedb SamuelLwisfrom William Clark soriginal drawing.

Reuben Gold IThwaites and the Historical Resurrectionof Lewis & Clark

By Matt Blessing

"It is a peculiarly noble work to rescuefrom oblivion those who deserveimmortality. " - Pliny the Younger Tribute to Reuben G. Thwaites, in The Wisconsin State Journal

qR euben Gold Thwaites, the second exploration, but what little knowledge they had director of the Wisconsin Historical of it was limited to its two captains, to the near ociety, first came into contact with the exclusion of other members of the corps. The original records of the Lewis and Clark Expedi- first official edition of Lewis and Clark'sjour- tion in early 1893, ninety years after the event. nals, an abridged version edited and published While examining twenty thousand pages of his- by Nicholas Biddle in 1814, had focused on the torical manuscripts and three thousand books most romantic and literary sections of the cap- bequeathed to the Society by his predecessor, tains' accounts. In 1893 a retired Army surgeon Lyman Copeland Draper, Thwaites noticed a and respected ornithologist, Elliott Coues, (pro- slim, worn notebook within a stack of larger nounced "cows") published an annotated edi- journals written by Draper. It turned out to be 6M Draper Mss tion of Biddle's earlier work. Coues's four the original journal kept by Sergeant Charles AlthoughFloyd sometimes volumes highlighted 's scien- Floyd, a member of the "Corps of Discovery." struggledwith his daily tific contributions, while demonstrating the car- Thwaites probably had to brush up on the entries,he beganhisjournal tographic skills of William Clark. withaflair, listinghis history of the expedition in order to verify that Coues had also rediscovered the original comrades,the date, and even Floyd was on the journey. In 1893 most edu- journals in the vaults of the American Philo- thelocation of hispurchase. cated Americans viewed the transcontinental sophical Society in Philadelphia. Unexamined expedition as a romantic episode in western for decades, Coues's "find" no doubt made

WINTER 2004-2005 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY him feel that he had done enough sleuthing for original doc- the winter of 1803-1804. In April of 1804, the captains pro- umentary sources. However, some scholars questioned why moted Floyd along with Nathaniel Pryor and John Ord- Coues had not mounted a search for the lost journals of the way-to the rank of sergeant. other participants known to have kept journals, and James Davie Butler suggested in The Nation in October of 1893 that C harles Floyd'sfifty-six-page journal lets us hear the "in perusing Coues's samples, [the] appetite grows. . . The voice of a young, semi-literate frontiersman under limited edition which Dr. Coues has now issued will soon be orders from his commanding officers to maintain exhausted." Despite these criticisms, scholars such a record. The text documents the struggles of reviewed Coues's edition favorably and the Corps to ascend the lower Missouri many Americans were first introduced River, swollen with spring runoff from to Lewis and Clark by his book. the distant Rocky Mountains. Nonetheless, the expedition Floyd's entries typically re- remained largely neglected corded weather conditions, in American classrooms distances, hunting and and among general fishing (including a haul readers. of 709 fish caught on a So when Reuben single day), and the Gold Thwaites hap- richness of the pened upon Floyd's Missouri River bot- slim volume among tomlands and sur- the papers of Ly- rounding prairies. man C. Draper, When a certain even he, although Private Moses Reed an establishedschol- deserted the expe- ar and editor, was dition, Sergeant not familiar with Floyd recorded de- otherindividuals among tails that the com- the group. In fact, manding officers Thwaites's identification ignored: "pon examin- of SergeantFloyd's journal ing his nap-Sack we found among the Draper Papers that he had taken his Cloas was to set him on his own jour- and all His powder and Balles, ney of discovery, which would en- and had hid them out that night rich the collections of several research and had made that an excuse to repositories,and ultimatelyenhance the gen- Desarte from us with out aneyJest Case." eral understanding of the Image ID 23907 Floyd also helped document Corps of Discovery in both Thwaiteshad a passionfor retracinghistoric waterways, the party's encounters with Thwaites'stime and our own. andfirmly believedthat suchexperiences were importantfoundations several tribes along the lower Charles Floyd, author of for historicalresearch. Yet in 1903, despitevacationing in Yellowstone Missouri, who, he observed, the journal that Thwaites andJacksonHole, Thwaitesdid not investigateany part of the had recently been weakened saved from the dustbin of Lewis and Clark route.The reason is still unknown. by a smallpoxepidemic. history, was born in 1782, Floyd maintained his and was one of nine young men from Kentucky on the expe- journal through August 18, when, some 950 miles north of St. dition. In 1801, at the youthful age of nineteen or twenty, he Louis, he prepared his final entry. The next day William was appointed the constable of ClarksvilleTownship, Ohio, an Clark recorded in his own diary on August 19, 1804, that appointment that reflects both his character and ability. Gary "Floyd was taken violently bad with the Beliose Cholick and E. Moulton, editor of the most recent volumes of the journals, is dangerously ill." Captain Clark and his slave, York, suggests that Floyd may have been a distant relative of attended to the hardworking sergeant that evening, unknow- William Clark. Meriwether Lewis regarded him as a "young ingly hastening his death by administering a purgative and man of much merit," selecting him for errands into Cahokia using lancets to bleed him. Floyd died shortly after noon the and St. Louis while the undisciplined Corps trained at Camp next day, probably the victim of a ruptured appendix. Buried Dubois along the Wood River in present-day Illinois during in a riverside bluff near present-day Sioux City, Floyd was the

WINTI'ER 2004-2005 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY only member of the Corps who died during the expedition. Harper, former manuscript curator at the Historical Society, Just how Lyman Draper acquired the journal of Charles believed that the Floyd journal may have been mixed with the Floyd is open to speculation. A letter to ThomasJefferson pre- Croghan materials. Finally, there is a chance that Draper pared by Lewis in present-day North Dakota in the spring of acquired the journal from an unknown person on one of his 1805 suggests that Floyd's journal was sent east with a party nine collecting trips to Border States like Kentucky and Ten- from the expedition which descended the Missouri after win- nessee between 1843 and 1852. Like many of his contempo- tering with the Mandan Indians. Yet although Draper corre- raries, Draper routinely annotated documents or added notes sponded with Mary Lee Walton, Floyd's sister, their letters concerning the provenance of individual items, but Sergeant from the 1870s contain no mention of the journal. It is possi- Floyd's journal lacks any such evidence and it is unlikely that ble that William Clark retained the journal, or reacquired it the provenance of the notebook will ever be determined. in the years just prior to the publication of Biddle's volumes in Considering the richness and depth of the Draper Papers, 1814. In any case, Lyman Draper was a great admirer of Reuben Gold Thwaites must have been frustrated by the lack George Rogers Clark, western military hero of the American of a paper trail. Revolution and older brother of William Clark. In the 1840s, Following his chosen motto, "we aim to be useful," Draper had acquired a large collection of Clark Family Thwaites quickly made Floyd's twelve-thousand-word journal Papers fromJohn Croghan, the brothers' nephew.Josephine available to historians. As a result, two months after the dis-

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three-volume Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Described by historian and Wisconsin professor as a collection of "the invaluable monu- menta" of the French colonial era in North America, it remains one of the most significant historical editing projects in the nation's history. During this project, Thwaites men- tored a highly skilled team of translators, transcribers, and editorial assistants. At the same time, he completed Chroni- cles of Border Warfare (a history of settlement in the western Alleghenies that had been partially drafted by Draper) and also wrote two popular biographies of Father Marquette and . As a result of all these projects, by the early years of the new century Thwaites had established his reputa- WHi(X3)19916 WHS Name File tion as one of the nation's preeminent historical editors. Overtime, William Clark (left) and Meriwether Lewis (right) have becomethe centralfigures of theCorps of Discove?y. S) o in 1901,with the centennialapproaching and numer- L ous cheap reprints of the journals appearing, the Amer- ican Philosophical Society (who owned the originals) covery, the American Philosophical Society asked James decided that the authentic text of the journals ought to be Davie Butler, who was one of its members, to edit the journal published once and for all. Elliot Coues, in preparing his suc- for publication in the APS's Proceedings. It was Butler who cessful 1893 edition of the official narrative, had modernized had criticized the work of Elliot Coues a few years earlier for quotations, inserted a new chapter as if it were part of the its lack of material on the enlisted men who served in the 1814 book, and liberally marked up Lewis and Clark's hand- Corps of Discovery. Although a longtime volunteer at the written manuscripts. APS approached the New York publish- Wisconsin Historical Society, Butler had been stunned to ers Dodd, Mead, and Co., who engaged Thwaites for a sum learn from Thwaites of the journal's existence. "Draper," But- of $1500 to carry out the work in time for the centennial. ler lamented, "who through a generation had known me well, Thwaites began to work on the journals, which were on and also of my interest in the discovery of the trans-Missouri, loan to the Wisconsin Historical Society from the American had never spoken to me of Floyd's journal." Philosophical Society. Each evening, Thwaites made sure to Draper apparently had not told Butler, Thwaites, or any- replace the red-morocco-bound journals in the Historical one else about the Floyd diary, and it should be no surprise Society's modern fireproof vault. Thwaites's contract with that it took Thwaites about five years to come across the jour- Dodd, Mead and Company required him to produce an edi- nal itself. When he took over the role of Society Director (then tion entitled The OriginalJournals of Levwisand Clark. He referred to as "Secretary") in 1887, Reuben Gold Thwaites initially anticipated that the project would require four vol- inherited numerous responsibilities, large and small. First umes, and that publication of all volumes would coincide with among these was the management of the Midwest's largest the centennial of the expedition in 1904. historical library, a research collection developed by Draper. Reporting to the American Historical Association after he Thwaites continued improving and expanding the collections, had completed the project, Thwaites suggested that "The more than doubling the physical size of the library by the time story of the records of the transcontinental exploration of the new headquarters building on the University of Wisconsin Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1803-1806) is almost campus opened in 1901. Although intent on modernizing the as romantic as that of the great discovery itself." As early as library, Thwaites also recognized that there was no substitute 1897 Thwaites had met some of William Clark's grandchil- for "shoe leather fieldwork" when it came to acquiring histor- dren. During the winter of 1901-1902 he began systemati- ical manuscripts. During the 1890s, he scored numerous "col- cally writing letters to the descendants of the expedition, lecting coups," adding the papers of Byron Kilbourn, inquiring to see if any other enlisted men's journals might Hercules Dousman, Increase Lapham, Henry S. Baird, Mor- have survived. Thwaites wrote to a colleague that this gan L. Martin, Bishop Jackson Kemper, and James Duane research required "considerable expenditure of time and Doty to the Society's collections. Wisconsin history-neg- money." Indeed, in searching for these journals Thwaites lected overall by Draper, who favored documenting trans- had embarked on his own kind of exploration. An archivist Appalachia-became one of Thwaites's specialties. venturing outside the walls of the archives, decades ahead of As if these duties were not enough, in the early 1890s his time, Thwaites was not content to rely upon source mate- Thwaites began directing preparation of the massive seventy- rial that had been deposited by Thomas Jefferson and

WINTER 2004-2005 : T WVilliamClark at the Amer- ican Philosophical Society. Learning from both Dra- per's techniques and his own collecting work in Wis- consin, Thwaites was confi- dent that he could unearth I~~~~~~~~~~~S777.: I more important new docu- vtt,.:. V>:: mentary sources. He was apparently especially moti- vated to locate the journal A~~~A of Sergeant John Ordway. Lewis and Clark indicated that Ordway had main- tained a good journal, but it had long been lost to Courtesyof the MontanaHistorical Society historians. "Lewisand Clarkat ThreeForks" by EdgarS. Paxson, oil on canvas, 1912, mural in theMontana State The letter-writing cam- Capitol. Thisimage and hundredslike it indicatethe level of romanceAmericans associate with the Corpsof paign borc fruit in early Discovegy'stravels, which, by all accounts,were harsh, exhausting, often frustrating, andfor CharlesFloyd, fatal 1903, when Thwaites learned about a woman in San Francisco who had in her pos- Bound in rough-tanned elk hide, the 292-page journal session the journal of Joseph XVhitehouse, the only known included annotations and several short entries by Captain documentation produced by a private among the Corps. Clark, and these remarks helped to document the journal-

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.~~...... :... At right,the darker ink at thetop is thefinal . 0O1v4a- /7 G d. wu r entgymade by Charlesr ' / V Floyd. The writing . belowwas added many PCvttt, ,A ;I yearslater "SeeCoues' ed. of Lewis& Clark 4 ?4) 6tecer ,< t vol. 1,p. 79,for account ? Photo by JerryPospeshil of deathof Charles . - , . , '( .fr Themonument to SergeantCharles Floyd Floyd.Feb 5, 1894, - nearSioux City, Iowa stands lOOfeet tall RGT"RGTis,of and marksthe soldier's gravesite. course,Reuben Gold Thwaites. 6M DraperMss

46 WINTER 2004-2005 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY keeping process. Throughout the journal Whitehouse confi- Thwaites to examine. Perhaps the most remarkable was a dently assigned original place-names to numerous tributaries, field journal, hand sewn and constructed of elk hide, "its cru- islands, and other features of the surrounding landscape. dity," Thwaites later wrote, "of exceeding interest." The Unfortunately Whitehouse apparently never consulted with Voorhis materials ultimately found a home at the Missouri his officers on these matters and none of his place-names Historical Society. appear on Captain Clark's maps. Joseph Whitehouse maintained his journal from the offi- T Nhe journalsas a body covereda range of information cial start of the expedition on May 14, 1804, to November 6, as well as a range of individual perspectives. William 1805. He struggled with language-his spelling was arguably Clark, the dutiful army officer, obeying PresidentJef- worse than Clark's and many historians believed that the ferson's orders, missed only a handful of journal entries dur- enlisted man eventually tired of keeping the daily journal. Yet ing the two-and-a-half-year expedition. (Lewis, by contrast, in early 1966 a manuscript written in another hand was dis- perhaps because he was suffering from depression during long covered in an antiquarian bookstore in Philadelphia. It stretches of the expedition, often went many weeks without appears that this "faircopy" had been lost prior to publication writing in his journal.) Clark's 224-page field notebook in the early nineteenth century. Spanning May 14, 1804, to recorded the Corps's history from September 11 to December April 2, 1806, it demonstrates Private Whitehouse's persever- 31, 1805, as the men trekked from present-day Lolo, Mon- ance in maintaining a journal for a full twenty-three months. tana, to the mouth of the Columbia. During this 110-day Both the original journal and fair copy now reside at span, Meriwether Lewis made only seven daily entries. Chicago's Newberry Library. Thwaites used the original, and Others of the Voorhis journals were crammed with Dodd and Mead arranged for the full text of the Whitehouse detailed sketches of flora and fauna, unknown to Euro Amer- journal to be included in the expanding editorial project. icans of the early nineteenth century, that the expedition had By August, 1903, Thwaites learned that his letter-writing documented. They also offered additional documentation of had identified more material. Writing to Frederick Jackson the 178 unknown plants and 122 animals that were new to Turner, who was vacationing in Maine, Thwaites spoke of "a science. Still other journals contained sketches depicting big find of Lewis and Clark material." What was this find? To Indian fishing methods, and even the Clatsop Indians' tech- his publisher, Thwaites explained almost matter-of-factly how niques of cosmetic head-flattening. The entries described his inquiries about Ordway had led to an "unexpected situa- both the routine and the extraordinary, and featured the cap- tion." A century after the expedition, Mrs. Julia Voorhis of tain's infectious enthusiasm and inventive spelling. Perhaps New York City still had in her possession additional journals the most famous line among the one hundred fifty thousand written by William Clark, her paternal grandfather. By con- words discovered by Thwaites was Clark's rapture as the tacting her, Thwaites had made one of the great documentary Corps descended the Columbia: "Ocian [sic] in view! O! the "finds" in the nation's history. However, another version of joy." (The entry was actually premature; he had mistaken an this find surfaced recently in a doctoral dissertation by Sherri estuary for the Pacific itself.) Bartlett-Brown, who describes how novelist Eva Emery Dye Mrs. Voorhis also brought forth more than sixty maps, tracked down Clark descendants in St. Louis and New York including a cartographic masterpiece depicting the American between 1899 and 1901, and found in the possession ofJulia west that was over nine feet in length! Finally, there was Clark Voorhis the large cache of hitherto unknown manu- important correspondence, including Meriwether Lewis's let- script material described by Thwaites. After Dye stopped in ter to Clark ofJune 19, 1803, offering detailed notes on the Madison in 1901 and informed Thwaites of what she had purpose of the expedition. In another lengthy letter, Lewis seen, he entered into negotiations with Voorhis, asking to offered Clark co-command of the expedition and concluded include the newly discovered manuscripts in his edition. by emphasizing his deep respect and affection for him: "I Unfortunately, in his introduction and correspondence he should be extremly [sic] happy in your company...." allowed it to appear as if he himself had unearthed these cru- Describing the discovery in an issue of Scribner's Maga- cial materials. In 1923 Dye recollected, "I, at one time, had zine published in mid-1904, Thwaites suggested that the the credit of discovering those documents." "ladies themselves were as yet unaware of the full significance Mrs. Voorhis and her daughter Eleanor invited Thwaites of their treasures."Thwaites probably should have been more to their Manhattan home that October. The Clarks appar- circumspect in relating this episode in a popular magazine, ently had not examined the family patriarch's journals in since negotiating the right to publish extracts from journals in nearly fifty years, since the time when they had passed from the possession of the business-minded Mrs. Voorhis proved Clark's fourth child and executor, George Rogers Hancock extremely arduous for him and publisher Robert Dodd. Usu- Clark, to his eldest daughter, now Julia Clark Voorhis. The ally unflappable, Thwaites complained to a friend that the two women brought out five bound journals in all for women were "conducting a holdup game" for a large sum,

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when, in his view, all the material "really belongs to offered other writers a complete documentary record. the United States government." The calm Soon, scores of articles, books, novels, and his- persistence of Robert Dodd, however, torical pageants based on the journals eventually led to the inclusion of the flowed forth. journals in the Original Journals Thwaites, of course, was not project. solely responsible for the rise of In 1904-1905, 750 eight-vol- interest in Lewis and Clark. ume sets of The OriginalJour- Clearly, the national celebration nals were published, containing of the centennial of the expedi- more than 2,700 pages in all tion in 1904-1906 had an and an atlas with 66 maps. impact as well. Moreover, the Thwaites's footnotes were professionalization of the his- sparse compared to those pro- WI toricaldiscipline, in additionto vided by Elliott Coues, but he the rise of the biological sci- included a comprehensive bibli- ences in the earlytwentieth cen- ography prepared by New York tury, had an important and State Historian Victor Paltsits, and longer-lastingeffect. Also, the clos- a detailed index as well. A limited edi- ing of the frontierand accompanying tion set of fifteen folio-size volumes z romanticizedviews about earlywestern containing artwork by Karl Bodmer exploration undoubtedly contributed completed in the 1830s-was also to the rise of Lewis and Clark. WHi(T53)99 printed. The project received glowing Nonetheless, just as the historian Thwaites'spublishing resultedin reviews, and popular interest in Lewis efforts Stephen Ambrose successfully raised increasedpublic attention of theSociety's awareness of World War II veterans and Clark surged. Historians and buffs collections. quickly began referring to the project as over the last decade, Thwaites did "Thwaites." The OriginalJournals also much to promote the importance of

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MissouriHistorical Society, St. Louis In hisfieldjournal William Clark

two-and-a-haifyearexpedition. This proved to be ofgreat value to thegovernment, as well as Clark'srelatives.

Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis

Thecover of Floyd'sdiagy was plain but Julia Clark Voorhis,the granddaughter of William Clark the observationshe sharedwere powerful. and herdaughter, Eleanor Voorhis,were pleased to show thepapers of theirancestor to ReubenGold Thwaites, 6M DraperMss but he underestimatedtheir business acumen when he expectedthem simply to donate the artifactsto scholarlyinstitutions.

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Lewis and Clark. He not only wrote for the scholar, but also penned articles in popular magazines and lectured before diverse audiences. ForFurther Reading Readers can examine Thwaites's edition of the T Nhwaites died in 1913, havingserved as directorof the Lewis and Clark journals in their entirety at the Wisconsin Historical Society for twenty-seven years. Society's American Journeys digital collection Eulogizing him, FrederickJackson Turner wrote that (www.americanjourneys.org). In his introduction the newspaperman turned historical editor-archivist had "met there, Thwaites explains the history of the journals and conquered difficulties that proved him an editor of the up to 1904. At American Journeys the Society very first rank. He ferreted out from their concealment miss- included seventy scans made directly from the ing documents necessary to complete the journals, deciphered original nineteenth-century Bodmer prints as well the difficult writing . . . mastered the problem of correlating as the complete text of the journals. Other Lewis and printing several journals . .. [and] enriched them with a and Clark documents found there include hand- wealth of historical and geographical annotation . . . setting written letters by Thomas Jefferson and Capt. forth the development and historic significance of this epic of William Clark, the original manuscript journal of American transcontinental exploration." Sgt. Charles Floyd, and contemporary magazine Archivists, historians, and editors can all learn valuable les- and book publications of the expedition's findings sons from Thwaites. His important collecting work demon- by Lewis, Clark, andJefferson. Thwaites's edition stratesjust how brief the nation's history is, and it reminds us of the works of the French traveler Louis Hen- that many important documentary sources may remain in the nepin (1626 -1705?), who spent considerable time hands of record creators and their descendants. Although his in Wisconsin, is also available at American Jour- was hardly an innovative technique, it may serve as a model of neys. A exhaustive bibliography of all literature how archivists, historical editors, and diligent researchers can pertaining to the expedition was published after effectively work as partners in acquiring valuable sources. this article was developed, entitled The Literature Indeed, many recent manuscript collections acquired by the of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: a Bibliography Wisconsin Historical Society have been team efforts, including and Essays by Stephen D. Beckham (Portland: war letters documenting World War II and Vietnam that were Lewis & Clark College, 2003). Lastly, any reader identified and sometimes included in the "Voices of the Wis- interested in learning more about the involvement consin Past" book series. Anyone with an interest in the Corps of Draper, Thwaites, and Quaife should read Paul of Discovery, average citizen or trained professional, owes an Russell Cutright's A History of the Lewis and immense debt of gratitude to Reuben Gold Thwaites. For ClarkJournals (Norman, University of Oklahoma exactly half a century, the "Thwaites" edition was the indis- Press, 1976). pensable tool, for anyone with a serious interest in the expedi- tion, including studies of their science, diplomacy, ethnology (topics researchers can now find with a quick internet query) depended on Thwaites. Important caches of additional William Clark Papers were found in St. Paul and Louisville, in 1954 and 1988, respectively. The exhaustive, thirteen-volume About the Autor edition of expedition journals directed by Gary E. Moulton from 1983 to 2001 provided the inter-disciplinary approach Matt Blessing is head of the Department that contemporary scholars required. But if history demon- of Special Collections and University strates a pattern, additional materials may again surface. In Archives at Marquette University. He pre- the words ofJames Davie Butler, the Thwaites and Moulton viously worked at the Wisconsin Histori- editions may both be "limited editions," whetting the appetites cal Society as a collection development of readers of the nation's "epic poem." MXY archivist and in the Office of School Ser- vices. Blessing earned master's degrees Acknowledgments in History from the University of Montana The author expresses his thanks to WHS archivist Harry and in LibraryScience from the University of Wisconsin-Mil- Miller and FrancisPaul Prucha, Sj., for their assistancewith this waukee. He and his family enjoy visiting historic sites along project.He also benefited from suggestionsreceived from mem- the Lewis and Clark Trail. bers of the Library Council of Southeast Wisconsin-Archives Committee, and from the Colonial Dames of Wisconsin.

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